Last month, WorkSafe reached a major milestone with the release of their first ever good practice guide around managing psychosocial risks at work. They released this guidance very quietly and without fanfare or even heads up to the stakeholders (including NZISM and many of the experts in the field) who had worked closely with them for a year-and-a-half to get the guidance over the line.

Why did WorkSafe sneak the guidance out? And what should NZISM members know about this guidance? Timing, as they say, is everything in politics. And a week-and-a-half before the release of the Psychosocial Risk GPG, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety was with the Prime Minister at the Post-Cabinet Press Conference appearing to rule out psychosocial risk management for small low-risk businesses.

Alongside this, the guidance had a difficult and protracted birth, with experts and commentators (including NZISM) criticising various elements of previous guidance for lack of clarity and workability.

During the development of the guidance, WorkSafe also disbanded the Mentally Healthy Work team and downscaled the resource dedicated to this topic. We think this was a shame given that WorkSafe’s research suggests that psychosocial risks are the second biggest cause of workplace harm and about as many people die from work-related suicide as from accidents at work each year.

Despite (and occasionally because of) the many hurdles that the Psychosocial Risk GPG had to leap, the guidance itself is now actually quite good. It sets out a useful framework for understanding, identifying, managing and monitoring psychosocial risks and does some useful things like putting psychosocial controls into a hierarchy of controls (pg 26). The guidance provides some clear and useful ideas as to possible protective factors.

Dealing with psychosocial risks is difficult. Individual susceptibility to harm varies greatly and is usually invisible. Many of the levers to improve things sit traditionally with managers or human resources rather than health and safety teams. These factors call for more help and guidance for businesses and workers not less.

The Psychosocial Risk GPG is not perfect or suitable for all audiences. It’s long and quite technical and many small business owners or workers would find it a frustrating read as a result. It also attempts to deal with too many elements of psychosocial risk at once. What’s needed is a suite of more-digestible guidance spun off from this that is written to be more accessible to different audiences and particular topics (I would love to see guidance on how to do change management in a less damaging way). It would be good to see guidance in other formats (for example, here’s a great video from WorkSafe Queensland on how to do a psychosocial risk assessment). Let’s hope that politics don’t get in the way of this work.

WorkSafe (particularly the Guidance and former-Mentally Healthy Work teams) deserve credit for sticking to their guns and getting this guidance out. Many of the improvements from the previous guidance owe a huge amount to the team of experts who came together to support WorkSafe and provide feedback. Along with NZISM, these included Louise Deacon, Millie Thompson, Zoe Port, David Tappin, Dougal Sutherland, and Liam Bourne along with a host of others as part of the consultation from professionals, unions and employers.

Meanwhile, we will continue to look for ways to put NZISM members in touch with experts on these topics and to help deal with these issues. It’s too important a topic to neglect.

Ngā mihi

Jeff Sissons
NZISM CEO